


everything will be all right

by jokeperalta



Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M, Original Character Death(s), Zombie apocalypse typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 19:58:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11744112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jokeperalta/pseuds/jokeperalta
Summary: Dwight, Caroline, and the zombie apocalypse.Yes,really.





	everything will be all right

**Author's Note:**

> Written for fuckyeahdwightcaroline's fanwork week for AU day. 
> 
> This fic came about by me trying to think of the weirdest possible AU to drop Caroline and Dwight into and - Zombie AU came to mind. And it was surprisingly easy to write and conceptualise from there. I don't know if it works tonally but let's go with it for the sheer heck of it!
> 
> It's still set in Poldark’s time (think Pride and Prejudice and Zombies but maybe… less facetious lol) - so obviously they don't have the kind of cultural primer on zombies that we have and the term isn't even in anything recorded until at least 1819, which is why they're never referred to as such here. I've put into the terms and metaphors by which I think 18th century England would have rationalised a burgeoning zombie apocalypse!

It's all he can do to nod gravely at the wretched woman standing watch, with her brood of anxious children clinging to her skirts.  He thinks she probably knew this was coming before she sent for him. She barely reacts but to swallow hard and brush stray tears away.

"Children," she addresses them. "I want each 'ee to kiss your pa and tell him you love him, then go in the bedroom and wait for me there. Not a peep, mind."

The children have long since picked up on the tension in the room, even if most are too young to understand its cause, and do as she asks, one by one. Dwight watches solemnly. 

"What'll happen now? To him?" she asks when they're alone. 

Dwight looks again at the body on the straw mat: its chalky skin and sunken features, and takes in the already lingering scent of decay around it. The body is almost entirely grey, robbed of the pumping blood and vitality, aside from the shockingly blood-red twisted scratch along its forearm. The contrast on the eyes is vaguely sickening.

He wishes he were less familiar with the process. 

"He'll remain unconscious for perhaps a day longer, then appear to convulse violently. He may open his eyes and make noise though will have lost his faculties and be unable to recognise anything or anyone around him. This will last anything from a few hours to a few days- dependant on how quickly the infection spreads in the brain. And then..."

He doesn't need to say more. With the next stage, he has no knowledge that the whole country is not privy to since this miserable age dawned.

"Will he- will he be in pain? A lot of pain, I mean?"

"Yes." 

He won't elaborate further but there's nothing about it he can soften or make comforting. There were no first hand accounts -for obvious reasons- but those who had been witness to the Change of others described it as though watching the very soul being torched in the fires of hell.

Dwight felt that description did not go far enough.

"Is there anything that can be done?"

Medical opinion in this area had barely progress beyond the initial shock of the ferocity and consequences of the infection-- no studies had been carried out as to the causes or origins of it. Sedatives were useless, delaying the convulsions long enough to give false hope but never stopping them. Dwight himself had attempted everything he could think of when the first few cases were reported as he was one of the few doctors who were willing to get close enough to attempt treatment.

Nothing made a difference. For some ailments, he believed something might be done: perhaps not now, perhaps even a hundred years in the future or more, but once medical science had improved, people might stop dying. One day. It gave him comfort to think so, anyway.

Nothing Dwight had ever come across felt like more of a hopeless cause than this. He stopped himself from imagining where it might end, for the sake of his own will to carry on.

"No."

"I see." Mrs Nancarrow looks down at her husband a few moments longer. Then she crosses the room, opens a drawer and pulls out a long sharp knife. She returns and kneels beside the body. The blade glints in the candlelight. 

"God has seen fit to end my marriage in petty treachery, doctor," she says, with a huff of bitter laughter.

Not even the most upright of Assizes would arraign, never mind convict her on such charges, of course. Courts barely considered those like her husband people anymore - not since the Massacre at York a year since- although there had been no official change in the law to reflect it. They were to be avoided, controlled, and more than anything feared. As a doctor he would be actively applauded for taking preventative action on the scourge, charlatans like Choake kept a veritable arsenal on his person at all times in case a suspected case arose. Sometimes he didn't even wait to confirm the diagnosis.

"I don't expect 'ee to stay and watch this," she says, turning the knife over in her hand.

Dwight doesn't move.

"How should- What would be the best way?" Mrs Nancarrow asks, voice breaking. Her hand shakes. "I don't want him to suffer."

Dwight closes his eyes briefly. He imagines this man in life-- laughing with his wife, drinking, eating, cherishing his children. An unbefitting end.

He takes the knife from her trembling grasp. "It shall be done. Go to your children. He won't suffer, I promise."

Some families preferred to do it themselves, taking some small comfort from their loved one taken by a hand that loved them before the infection did. But Dwight could see she would not be one of them: the deed they both know is necessary would haunt her. Mrs Nancarrow is as much his patient now as the man in front of him, if not more so. He would shoulder the burden, if only to protect her from mental strife.

"Thank you," she says, weak with relief. She leans forward and kisses her husband's forehead, pushing his limp hair back and not managing to hold back tears.

She gets up and leaves without a second glance. Easier that way, probably.

Left alone with Mr Nancarrow, Dwight lifts its head with some effort. He finds the soft point at the base of the skull.

"God forgive me," he says. 

He drives the knife upwards.

  

\--

 

Dwight stays at the Nancarrow residence much longer than he plans. He feels it personally and professionally necessary to see it through - wrapping the body, constructing a funeral pyre as he's become relatively skilled at doing recently, and setting it alight. 

The clergy refuse to take part in services for the Marked, since by their very nature their souls have already descended and are the Devil's chattel from the moment the infection passes to them. The Nancarrow family come outside at daybreak, watching Dwight light the pyre and watching the flames grow to lick the grey sky. 

Dwight says a prayer for the man and stands in bleak silence over the makeshift memorial.

At the end of it all, he wants nothing more than to go home to a strong drink and as much sleep as his life will allow.

But, it turns out, his life won't even allow him that much.

"Dr Enys?" A man rides up to him, just half a mile from home. 

"Yes?"

"I've been sent from Killewarren, a member of the household taken mortal sick," the man says. 

He feels so exhausted the man's word don't parse as they should.

"The Wrath?" Dwight asks after a minute.

The Wrath of God: a holdover name from the early days when the learned believed God to be exacting punishment on deserving sinners, the idle poor and fallen women. That opinion fell out of favour with the eventual and inevitable spread to members of the gentry -for what had they ever done to incur His anger?- but the name held fast.

"I believe my mistress suspects so, the circumstances were reported to me by her lady's maid. Could you attend?"

Killewarren is Ray Penvenen's estate. Dwight hadn't known of a lady of the house - Ray Penvenen is a lifelong bachelor. 

"Doesn't Mr Penvenen prefer the services of Dr Choake?" Dwight asks. Never one to be able to resist a cry for help from anyone, he is already half intent on going but it occurs to him to at least nod to social niceties. Dwight can't imagine a time where it matters less than now, but those of Ray Penvenen's stature were known to cling to them even harder under perceived attack.

"He cannot be reached, and I understand it is something of an emergency."

He's hardly in fit shape to be in polite company now, dirt-stained and unkempt, but if the emergency is worthy of its name the Penvenens won't care. Dwight wills his exhaustion away, tightens his grip on his reins. "Lead on."

 

-

 

The halls of Killewarren are empty and lifeless when he is shown in. He is informed that the household now keep to as few rooms as they can manage and as far away from the doors as possible, obstacles and heavy doors placed along the route to them- all for the the event of a horde gaining access. 

Dwight thinks of families he tends who live together in just two rooms with a single exit, and how they don't seem to be nearly as anxious as the Killewarren household. 

He is shown into a much brighter lit room with the sort of furnishings he had expected on arrival. A single woman occupies it, her fine silk skirts draped over the end of a chaise lounge. She looks up at him with sharp, anxious eyes. 

At first, he believes he's been led to the wrong room. It doesn't take his medical opinion to judge that the woman in front of him is in perfect health-- her skin is rosy and clear, clear blue eyes bright and focused, lips the shade of roses.

(Rather, it's his poetic opinion that adds the final observation.)

If she were the suspected case, even in the time it took for her footman to ride to where he stopped Dwight and ride back would have been time enough time that she would have begun to feel the effects. 

"Thank heavens, you're here at last," she says. "It's Horace- he's had two fits already, and now he's barely breathing."

Following her gaze, he realises she is not, in fact, the only occupant of the room.

"Your dog," Dwight says with some effort, staring at the morose looking pug beside her. He's impressed how evenly it comes out. 

"Will you attend him, please?" The words are polite, but her voice has an edge of impatience.

Her gall and lack of awareness astonishes him. He thinks of the night he's had - how the blood of another human being remains under his nails and staining his mind even now, the sad-set eyes of the man's children as he left the house. Only that he would have to forgo the oblivion of sleep for a case of hypochondria by proxy on behalf of a dog.

He swallows the majority of his anger but his response is still sharper than it would have otherwise been. "I think your footman made a mistake - it would have been a farrier you sent him for."

"It's not my custom to employ a horse doctor for Horace, especially not under such circumstances. I want the best advice and I'm willing to pay for it - but perhaps you do not know your trade well enough, we'll send for someone else."

It's an unabashed challenge to his ego that rankles a little, as she intends, but not enough to induce him to prove her wrong. "That was what I was about to suggest. Good day to you."

He turns for the door but doesn't make it more than a few steps.

"Wait!"

Dwight circles only half way back to face her, reluctant.

"Have you never had a dog of your own?" she demands.

Dwight shifts his weight between his feet, cautious of where this is going. "Yes," he answers.

"Would you let him die on a point of formality?"

He finds himself softening his stance against his will and better judgement. It's her eyes that do it, he decides. The note of desperation he finds there that isn't wholly divorced from family members of his (human) patients. She's requested his assistance in the same spirit after all, and, as unaware as she is- it's for the same reason he can't hold her accountable for the horror he's seen. 

Plus, it'll take as long to get to his house whether he looks at her damn dog or not.

"What makes you suspect the Wrath?" Dwight finally asks.

He isn't even certain animal transmission is possible. Animals and livestock have fallen victim, but only as meals for the Marked in place of human victims. He certainly hasn't been made aware of any Marked beasts roaming the county, or further afield. He looks at the little dog beside her and tries to imagine it.

Dwight has to school his face carefully to disguise his mirth at the idea of a half-demon pug lalloping the streets, half decayed, in search of brain matter. 

"I'm perfectly aware it sounds ridiculous," she snipes. Apparently he had not disciplined his face quite well enough. "We were travelling from London yesterday -my Uncle Ray insisted having me here upon hearing reports of the Marked in the city, I resisted as long as possible but he would not be put off any longer. Anyway, my carriage's wheel got stuck in a clod for a brief time and-- well, one of the creatures was unseen until the last moment and got its arm within the carriage before my driver was able to, well.  Dispose of it."

"And you believe it got close enough to touch your dog?"

"I didn't think so at first -Horace would have sooner bit its finger off before letting it get close to me- but the fits, and his temperament today. It seemed too much of a coincidence, to me, anyway."

Dwight sits on the footstool next to the chaise, putting aside his Royal College of Physicians training and years of experience to examine Horace the pug as earnestly as he can manage. It may mean nothing in relation to a canine patient, but Horace smells nothing like the Marked Dwight comes into contact with, smelling unpleasant but only how a dog typically ought to smell. His eyes are clear, and Dwight can see no scratches of any sort topically.

He is lethargic and his breathing slightly laboured, but Dwight suspects that has the distinctly mortal origin of being permitted to be much too lazy for much too long.

"It may seem so to you, but that's what it is," Dwight says. He meets her questioning gaze. "A coincidence."

She breathes a heavy sigh of relief, bending down to kiss Horace's soft head, and Dwight finds himself feeling much the same way at the little dog's favourable fate. It's not often, after all, that he gets to impart good news these days.

"And his fits?"

"Not uncommon for his age. Nevertheless, I would advise a lowering system of treatment: no more sweetmeats, plenty of running and jumping. Dogs do not need to be carried." He removes his pad and pencil from his pocket. "Have a druggist make up this paregoric of black cherry water and Theban opium."

He hands her the prescription. She smiles at him, and it's quite dazzling. "Thank you."

Dwight nods in return. He watches her pull Horace into her lap like a child, nuzzling him affectionately. She appears tired suddenly, as though her worry was the only thing sustaining her and now that its cause had been removed, she had nothing to function on.

"What about you?" Dwight asks carefully.

By the way she looks at him, he might as well have spontaneously grown a second head. "What about me?"

"How do you feel? A close encounter like that... it must have been terrifying," Dwight observes.

"Are you mocking me?" she asks sharply.

Dwight knows what it's like to be in an enclosed space with the Marked, and to fear on the most basic level for one's life. "Not at all." 

She accepts this answer after a moment's intense examination in which Dwight feels himself start to heat up and his stomach tie in knots. She has a curious effect on him, this strange forthright young woman.

"It was, quite," she acknowledges hesitantly, folding her hands around Horace's plump belly. "I had never seen one in the flesh before, and it wasn't what I was expecting, I suppose. I- I would swear the creature looked into my eyes for a moment and I thought I saw a person there. But I blinked and the next instant, it had gone and it’s eyes were just so _empty_..." -she glances at him, then straightens, as though she's suddenly aware of who she's talking to and that she’s said too much "-Still, I fared better than my ladies' maid. The poor girl screamed, then fainted, and had to be brought around with smelling salts!"

Dwight looks away, smiling politely and allowing her to mask her vulnerability again. To have been trusted enough in that brief moment for her to forget herself and show it at all – it feels like something important. Just what- he isn’t at all sure, but important nonetheless.

“Well, if it’s any comfort to you, I believe you have an advantage coming up against the Marked that few, if anyone, in the country has,” Dwight says. Miss Penvenen waits, almost demanding to know what he means just by looking at him. “A loyal guard dog whose smell rivals theirs.”

Her answering smirk comes slowly, begrudgingly, blooming like a flower and just as beautiful.

“He shan’t listen to that criticism, shall you, Horace? Since it comes from a physician with a face smeared in mud.”

That comment ought to strike a nerve with him, knowing just where the dirt came from, but strangely it doesn’t. Instead he just feels slightly embarrassed that she noticed when he thought he’d gotten away with it.

In general, he feels so much unburdened from being here that the events of last night and this morning feel far off and long since past. He isn’t naïve or fool enough to think they’ll stay that way- especially when he’s alone with his darker thoughts again and in his nightmares. But the momentary relief is heady, especially from an unexpected source.

“That’s fair,” Dwight acknowledges, with a little laugh.

He stands up, and heads – a little reluctantly- towards the door.

She calls behind him: “What is your name?”

 

\---

 

Dwight leaves Killewarren feeling lighter and happier than he has any right to feel, and oddly glad he stayed. Demelza is always telling him he needs more light in his life, to offset the darkness of his world—he wonders if this is what she meant.

After mounting his horse, he looks up once more at the house of Ray Penvenen – and now resident also to his niece. His eyes catch upon a flash of something in one of the front windows, one of the corridors abandoned by the household. For a moment, he’d swear it was a flash of pink silk and he strains his eyes trying to see it clearer.

The windows remain empty. Dwight turns away and spurs his horse, cursing himself as ridiculous the whole way home.

**Author's Note:**

> Petty treachery or petty treason = This was a crime in England and Wales until 1828 (and Ireland until 1829) which took the form of an aggravated form of murder and the other side of the coin to high treason which was committed against a sovereign. It was basically the murder of a social superior by a subordinate -- including the murder of a master by a servant, a prelate by a member of the clergy, or, most often and referred to here, the murder of a husband by his wife. Pre-1790 petty treason by women had been punished by burning at the stake (the same penalty as high treason); after 1790, it was punished by hanging. 
> 
> ^ Using my degree for something! Anyway, believe it or not, I have more ideas for this universe so this might not be the end of the story..


End file.
